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How to prepare a Mac for Astrophysical Research

Change to tcsh

So, by default, OSX runs the bash shell at the command prompt. However, most astronomers tend to prefer tcsh. Probably this is because iraf expects tcsh. There are some excellent instructions on how to switch to tcsh at Mark Westmoquette’s Apple Mac pages, so I won’t repeat them here.

XCode

Not strictly necessary, but if you ever need to compile things from source code, you’ll need this software. I install it because various items in fink (see below) sometimes don’t have binaries — only source code. So, this is needed for Fink to do its thing.

It can be found on Apple’s webpage, although I think you need to register (it’s free) to download it.

Fink

The Fink project was created with the goal of modifying Unix software so that it compiles and runs on the Mac. Basically it provides a mechanism to easily install all your unix favourites, such as Gimp, ghostview (gv) and xv on your mac. Fink needs to be installed and can be used by itself. However, Fink Commander makes it even easier to install individual packages, so personally I like to use this add-on.

It’s a simple download an installation. Basically you click your way through their install package, and then you add a few lines to your .cshrc file. They have detailed instructions, along with screenshots, which you can find here: